When Alina Britchi, an East Lyme resident and a science teacher at Westbrook High School, goes back to school this year, she said she’ll be wearing her blue flight suit.

Britchi traveled in June to attend space camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Ala., alongside other educators from across the United States and the world. She said she now plans to share her experience with her students to interest them in space and to teach them lessons for their future careers.

During her five-day trip, she learned about the history of space, participated in engineering challenges, completed training for two space missions, went on a zip line and walk-on-the-moon and multi-axis simulators. She also met Ed Buckbee, who founded U.S. Space Camp at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, in collaboration with Wernher von Braun, and is the author of the book “The Real Space Cowboys.”

According to a news release, more than 200 teachers attended the Honeywell Educators at Space Academy through a partnership between Honeywell and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

The participants were divided into seven teams, with each team named after one of the modules from the International Space Station. Each team made their own patches, with Britchi’s team — Team Kibo — creating a patch with the colors of flags from across the world, from South Africa to Romania, where Britchi originally is from.

Since Britchi has returned from the program, she said her friends and neighbors have been excited to hear about her experience.

Britchi said there is renewed interest in space, as people are realizing the next frontier is travel to Mars — and today’s middle school students could be the generation that gets there.

The engineering challenges that the teams engaged in — from building their own rockets to building a module around an egg to protect it when it’s dropped — directly apply to her classroom. She said she’s now looking at how she can rearrange the curriculum to make it more engaging and plans attention-grabbing activities for her students.

“Already my mind is shifting in the way I’m going to teach,” she said.

She said she plans to wear her flight suit from space camp on the first day of school — and perhaps for “flight suit Fridays” — to start the discussion and get students more interested in space.

Britchi, who recently started a science club, said that while space travel is competitive, there are also more opportunities for scientists to go to space.

Britchi said the biggest lesson she will share with her students is about perseverance.

While at camp, she met Homer H. Hickam Jr., who wrote the memoir “Rocket Boys.” The memoir describes how he and his friends taught themselves calculus from a book, when their high school was too small to have a dedicated calculus course, she said. They then applied their knowledge to build rockets.

She also met astronaut Michael Foreman, who shared that he got rejected several times from NASA before ultimately being accepted.

“You need to persevere in order to get something you want,” she said. “It doesn’t always come easy and, more likely than not, you have to put in a lot of work.”

Britchi said she loves learning and teaching and is always looking for professional development opportunities. She said she submitted an application for the program, which included three essays, after hearing about the opportunity for the summer.

“I like to learn, and I like to share what I learn,” she said. “I like to ignite the same kind of enthusiasm in other people.”

k.drelich@theday.com